Listening to music is not only a pleasurable activity but also an almost necessary task for those whose vocation it is to incorporate words – a mixture of sound and silence – as a way of illuminating existence. In the archives of Clarice Lispector, Otto Lara Resende, and Decio de Almeida Prado, there are several LPs that help us get to know a little about the musical taste of these three writers.
Clarice Lispector, for example, was explicit in relation to what music meant to her. In Água Viva, she confesses: “I see that I’ve never told you how I listen to music – I gently rest my hand on the record player and my hand vibrates, sending waves through my whole body: and so I listen to the electricity of the vibrations, the last substratum of reality’s realm, and the world trembles inside my hands.”
Covers from Clarice Lispector’s LPs: on the left, St. Matthew Passion, by J.S. Bach, performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam; on the right, The Complete String Quartets of Ludwig von Beethoven, performed by the Budapest String Quartet. Clarice Lispector Archive / IMS Collection
On the left, Jeanne D’Arc au bucher, by Arthur Honegger, performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra; on the right, Othello, by William Shakespeare, with Paul Robeson, José Ferrer, Uta Hagen, and Edith King. Clarice Lispector Archive / IMS Collection.
See also
by Bruno Cosentino
Academic studies on Clarice Lispector continue to be developed at foreign universities. In 2017, a wide-ranging seminar about the author was held at the University of Oxford.
by Sônia Roncador
The frequent allusion to domestic servants in the urban environment of her chronicles demonstrates what is a reality for many middle-class families in the country: incorporated into the intimate environment of the home in the condition of a “domesticated outsider”, the domestic servant constitutes the most lasting and personal relationship that a member of the middle class allows themselves to establish with poverty.
by Victor Heringer
Clarice Lispector’s birthday was last Sunday, December 10, but the “Clarice’s Hour” celebrations continue in Brazil and abroad.
by Elizama Almeida
In launching in 2015, in the United States, the unprecedented collection in one book of all the short stories by Clarice Lispector, the researcher Benjamin Moser...
by Elizama Almeida
Na cavidade do rochedo: a pós-filosofia de Clarice Lispector (In the Cavity of the Rock: The Post-Philosophy of Clarice Lispector) is a study published exclusively in electronic format and available for download here.
by Maria Clara Bingemer
The numerous commentators who not only in Brazil but also throughout the world investigate Clarice Lispector’s work encounter several aspects to highlight in her multifaceted writing.1 From the fruitful tension between transcendence and contingence to the profound and refined attention to the human condition, one can encounter an immense variety of dimensions in her body of writings.
